(1) Field of the Invention
This invention concerns methods for enhancing the recovery of crude oil from an oil well by in-situ cracking and/or steam reforming of an oxygenated organic compound to form hydrogen followed by hydrogenation and by recovery of hydrogenation reaction products and crude oil.
(2) Description of the Art
Many oil deposits exist which contain heavy oil that is difficult to recover from underground. The Orinoco Tar Belt in Venezuela, the Alberta Tar Sands in Canada and the heavy California oils around Bakersfield and the Santa Maria basin are examples of such difficult to recover oils. The Orinoco Tar Belt in particular is estimated to include up to a trillion barrels of oil of which only a few percentages can be produced using current production methods.
Some difficult to recover oils are under production with enhanced oil recovery methods. Examples of useful enhanced oil recovery methods include steam flooding, CO2 injection and water floods. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,050,515, 4,444,257 and 4,448,251 disclose enhanced oil recovery methods that employ in situ hydrogenation. However, production of difficult to recover oils is only slightly improved by many of these enhanced oil recovery techniques. There is clearly a need, therefore, for new techniques for improving the production of difficult to recover oils.